It wasn’t a question he could answer. “I need you around,” he said lightly, “to make a success of me.” They were standing now, getting ready to leave. Lois was crying.
“I wasn’t any good for you,” she said. “We weren’t any good for each other. Only for a time, before we were married, did things seem possible. I can’t stop crying.”
He held her to him, unable to relinquish his memory of her. “I still miss you,” he said.
Her body turned against him, all bones and angles, in a sudden tremor of fear. “You’re not going to contest the annulment?” she asked.
When he said she could have the annulment, two if she wanted, she relaxed, and kissed him good-bye again. “It was a good afternoon,” she said, documenting the fact for posterity. “In some way I’ll always love you, Peter. I will.”
“In what way?” he wanted to know.
“Walk with me to Broadway,” she said, collecting her purse, her things. She took his hand. “You’re really better than anyone.”
They walked quickly. “It was a good afternoon,” she said again. “I’m glad we met, aren’t you?”
He nodded without moving his head.
“Are you sorry about today? Do you think it was a mistake to meet if we’re not going to see each other any more?”
He shook his head, trying to dislodge words yet unborn. “I wanted to see you,” he said slowly, as though he were a child speaking the only words he knew. A groan of laughter escaped. “I feel great,” he moaned. The weight of the city settled on his chest.
“I know,” she commiserated. “It’s terrible, I can’t stop crying.” Wiping her eyes with her scarf, tears coming faster than the ones she erased. Her face bone-thin, scarred with tears, beautiful to him. “I’d better go. I have to meet someone,” she said. “Peter, I wish it were you I were seeing.”
Obsessed, he turned on her. “Who’re you going out with?” he asked as if it were a matter of curiosity — he fooled nobody.
She turned her head in a gesture of impatience. “What difference does it make?” she said gently. “Let’s say good-bye here, Peter.” They were on 110th and Broadway — the IRT station across the street. They shook hands, lingered. She offered him her face to be kissed. A madwoman passed them, muttering, waving her head at them as she passed. “You’re dirtying the streets,” she mumbled. “Get off.” Lois laughed.
They walked to 108th Street, then wandered back to 110th. “I have to run,” Lois said, making no move to go. “Will you kiss me good-bye?” She laughed giddily. “That’s all we’ve done all day — is kiss each other good-bye.”
Her undereyes were charred, he noticed for the first time, like burnt-out fuses; her face tortured and amazingly beautiful in the late-afternoon shade. They embraced delicately, afraid of breakage.
They separated, Lois looking around as if concerned at who might be watching. They embraced again.
“Lois,” he said quickly; it was something he had to know. “When we were married, was there someone else …?” He watched her face as he asked but there was nothing to see, her eyes impassive or merely indifferent. And nothing happened. A twist of pain, almost a smile, lit the corner of her mouth. Then, abruptly, she turned and ran across the street into the entrance of the subway, her long hair in back unknotting, spilling loose as she went down the stairs. “Lois,” he called, “I didn’t mean it.” He was too tired to follow.
| 12 |
When he got back to his room there was a note under his door, printed in large, childlike red letters on yellow drawing paper: SOME GLORIA WANTS YOU TO CALL HER. KEEP IT UP. It was unsigned. He put the note away in his wastebasket for future reference, and paced the length of the room, six steps each way, as calm as a stone; then he picked up a straight-backed chair and for the hell of it heaved it against the wall, watching it dance its way up, then, shivering, flailing its limbs, slide to the floor. The wall bruised black, the greenish plaster chipped away where the chair had danced. Following the chair, Peter’s fist cracked into the wall, pulled back at the instant of contact, the wall turning soft, bleeding. His hand tingled without pleasure. The room murdered him with its cuts. The price of victory, he discovered, is the shared acknowledgment of defeat.
Sour rage mocked his efforts, though he did his mean best. He took them all on: chairs, desk, ceiling, walls, dresser, memories — one by one, all at once, as they came on from all sides — mechanical, murderous, intent on taking his life. He didn’t quit until it was over, and then, exhilarated — his wounds like medals — he spread himself out on the floor and went to sleep.
“Telephone, Becker,” someone called, and Peter heard — the name Becker familiar, his own name even — but it made in the larger contexts of movement and desire no difference, no difference at all.
“Becker, telephone. Telephone, you stupid bastard. You dumb shit. Schmuck, failure, clown, crap head, schmegeggi”
They were calling him.
“Hello,” he said. It was long distance — he could tell from the drone of voices in the background.
“Come home.”
“I am home. Who the hell is this?”
“Come on home, fellow. We need you.”
“Yeah? What for?”
“What a question! We need you to show us how it’s done.”
“I don’t mind. Who’s this calling, please?”
“How do you do it? What’s the story?”
“Well, you see, the way I do it is this …” He cleared his throat.
“Great!”
“I haven’t finished. You see …”
“I get it. Never finish anything ‘cause the finish is the end. That’s the secret, huh? Everything should be uncompleted, because that’s life — man, I mean you’re dead when you’re done. I follow you. If you ask me, I think you’re really on to something.”
“I don’t want to argue with you, but I don’t think you’re getting what I’m saying. I think everything you start ought to be finished.”
“Kill ‘em all, huh? I like that even better. Finish them off before they finish you off. Will you come home, Sam, and show us how it’s done? We haven’t had a hero in these parts in a dog’s age.”
“Sam? I think you have the wrong number, buddy.”
“That’s the way it is. Some days you get only wrong numbers no matter who you call. Anyway, keep up the good work, boy, and let’s hear from you now and again. What do you say?” Before Peter could say anything, the phone went dead.
‘What are you doing on the floor?” someone said, nudging him in the ribs with the toe of a shoe. “Did you fall? What happened to you?”
“The bed moved,” he said, a joker even in his dreams, but when he looked up — the walls moving in odd ways — he wasn’t dreaming. (Helena, the dark witch of the kitchen, was straightening up his room.)
He blinked his eyes.
“I got tired of waiting for you to invite me in,” she said. “There was all this noise. I came in to see if you were all right.”
His body ached: head, hands, back. The room half dark, he wondered what time it was, what day. What year. “I’m all right,” he said, groaning, trying to find a painless way of getting up. He had the feeling, still undefined, that he had lost something. “How did you get here?” he asked, not quite sure yet that he wasn’t the one out of place.
“The door was open,” she said. “Do you want me to go away?” She was sitting on his bed, her back against the wall, with a kind of proprietary confidence. “I’ll go if you want me to. I know I’m much too aggressive; I have a way of imposing on people who interest me, so if you want to get rid of me, just say so. I won’t be hurt. Just tell me to get out.”